tell it me!" she cried. "You must! I'll never tell anyone else
at all, I vow and declare I won't!"

Her small frame wriggled with emotion, and with imploring eyes
she jigged impatiently just in front of me. Her hair was tumbled
bewitchingly on her shoulders, and even the loss of a front
tooth--a loss incidental to her age--seemed but to add a piquancy
to her face.

"You won't care to hear about it," I said, wavering. "Besides, I
can't explain exactly. I think I won't tell you." But all the
time I knew I should have to.

"But I DO care," she wailed plaintively. "I didn't think
you'd be so unkind!"

This would never do. That little downward tug at either corner
of the mouth--I knew the symptom only too well!

"It's like this," I began stammeringly. "This bit of road here--
up as far as that corner--you know it's a horrid dull bit of
road. I'm always having to go up and down it, and I know it so
well, and I'm so sick of it. So whenever I get to that corner, I
just--well, I go right off to another place!"

"What sort of a place?" she asked, looking round her gravely.

"Of course it's just a place I imagine," I went on hurriedly and
rather shamefacedly: "but it's an awfully nice place--the nicest
place you ever saw. And I always go off there in church, or